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A review by aziraphale2000
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
3.0
I adore post-apocalyptic books. And this book explored what most books in the post-apocalyptic genre ignore: female and queer perspectives. So much of post-apocalyptic literature is heterosexual, Western, male fantasy (stock piling weapons, women, and power). Our unnamed, female protagonist spends time finding birth control, Plan B, and tampons. She dresses in drag to protect herself from the male gaze. I was struck by how similar her choices are to women's choices *now*: trying to access increasingly limited health choices and avoid the dangerous male gaze.
The pacing of the book just killed it for me.
Spoilers ahead.
The author spent pages and pages on this Mormon settlement. I thought she captures the culty Mormon ideology perfectly. Members of this Mormon sect are so blinded by religious dogma that they cannot see the world falling apart around them. All the time spent on the Mormons felt off balance with the rest of the book... at the end, there are these little stories tacked in from other survivors. They feel like an afterthought.
And some of the ideas fell flat to me. Small boys are put to the task of scribing new copies of "The Book of the Unnamed Midwife." There's a religious aura floating around how they're treating the text... this brave new testimony of the midwife feels just as culty as the Mormons.
The author says that the midwife is birthing a new world, but I never felt like the midwife was doing that. She was just reacting to what happened to her... and in the new world, women are treated like commodities with little agency... doesn't feel new.
I didn't understand the wooden belly symbolism.
And I have to confess, my personal experiences make me skeptical of lauding midwives as greater than or better than doctors. I think I was supposed to feel lots of Big Emotions in the last paragraphs of the novel. It just felt like I was being told what to feel.
The pacing of the book just killed it for me.
Spoilers ahead.
The author spent pages and pages on this Mormon settlement. I thought she captures the culty Mormon ideology perfectly. Members of this Mormon sect are so blinded by religious dogma that they cannot see the world falling apart around them. All the time spent on the Mormons felt off balance with the rest of the book... at the end, there are these little stories tacked in from other survivors. They feel like an afterthought.
And some of the ideas fell flat to me. Small boys are put to the task of scribing new copies of "The Book of the Unnamed Midwife." There's a religious aura floating around how they're treating the text... this brave new testimony of the midwife feels just as culty as the Mormons.
The author says that the midwife is birthing a new world, but I never felt like the midwife was doing that. She was just reacting to what happened to her... and in the new world, women are treated like commodities with little agency... doesn't feel new.
I didn't understand the wooden belly symbolism.
And I have to confess, my personal experiences make me skeptical of lauding midwives as greater than or better than doctors. I think I was supposed to feel lots of Big Emotions in the last paragraphs of the novel. It just felt like I was being told what to feel.